“Who is that man, and why isn’t the movie just about him?”

February 4, 2016 12:39 PM

The epic uncool of Philip Seymour Hoffman.
posted by Sebmojo (27 comments total)

I love this scene:

Lester Bangs: They make you feel cool. And hey. I met you. You are not cool.
William Miller: I know. Even when I thought I was, I knew I wasn't.
Lester Bangs: That's because we're uncool. And while women will always be a problem for us, most of the great art in the world is about that very same problem. Good-looking people don't have any spine. Their art never lasts. They get the girls, but we're smarter.

PSH was that same character. He didn't play Lester Bangs. "Lester Bangs" was the name of PSH in Almost Famous. Slight but significant distinction.
posted by grubi at 12:48 PM on February 4, 2016 [4 favorites]

For a split second when I read the name in the title I forgot that he had died. Then I remembered... Damn.

Great article. Thanks for posting.
posted by Jalliah at 12:49 PM on February 4, 2016 [1 favorite]

Isn’t The Dissolve over? Have I become unstuck in time?
posted by Going To Maine at 12:50 PM on February 4, 2016 [2 favorites]

It's from the beforetimes, Going To Maine.
posted by Etrigan at 12:51 PM on February 4, 2016 [2 favorites]

Sometimes I feel like we missed out on an amazing Big Lebowski spinoff with Brandt as the main character. I can totally see him wince-smiling through some kind of amazing SoCal adventure.
posted by selfnoise at 12:52 PM on February 4, 2016 [8 favorites]

And then, clenching her fists for the ones, like us, who are oppressed by the figures of beauty: she fixed herself and said, "Well, nevermind -- we are ugly, but we have the music."
posted by clockzero at 12:52 PM on February 4, 2016 [5 favorites]

I couldn't get through this. It made me too sad. I loved PSH.

I have trouble with anything Robin Williams these days too.
posted by bearwife at 12:54 PM on February 4, 2016 [7 favorites]

I watched Synecdoche, New York again last fall for the first time since PSH died. That movie took on new depths and was overwhelming in parts. I kept choking on the emotional reaction of that experience the rest of the weekend. Ugh.

And then the minister said:

"Everything is more complicated than you think. You only see a tenth of what is true. There are a million little strings attached to every choice you make; you can destroy your life every time you choose. But maybe you won't know for twenty years. And you may never ever trace it to its source. And you only get one chance to play it out. Just try and figure out your own divorce. And they say there is no fate, but there is: it's what you create. And even though the world goes on for eons and eons, you are only here for a fraction of a fraction of a second. Most of your time is spent being dead or not yet born. But while alive, you wait in vain, wasting years, for a phone call or a letter or a look from someone or something to make it all right. And it never comes or it seems to but it doesn't really. And so you spend your time in vague regret or vaguer hope that something good will come along. Something to make you feel connected, something to make you feel whole, something to make you feel loved. And the truth is I feel so angry, and the truth is I feel so fucking sad, and the truth is I've felt so fucking hurt for so fucking long and for just as long I've been pretending I'm OK, just to get along, just for, I don't know why, maybe because no one wants to hear about my misery, because they have their own. Well, fuck everybody. Amen.

posted by dios at 1:18 PM on February 4, 2016 [32 favorites]

I just can't. It broke my fucking heart when he died, and every time I see him in a film or a photo, it breaks my heart a little all over again.
posted by ersatzkat at 1:25 PM on February 4, 2016 [7 favorites]

One of the all-time greats.

Calm down and shut the fuck up.
posted by porn in the woods at 2:01 PM on February 4, 2016

"The only true currency in this bankrupt world is what we share with someone else when we're uncool."

PSH was a billionaire, and I miss him.
posted by nubs at 2:10 PM on February 4, 2016 [4 favorites]

I even got teary-eyed in the last Hunger Games movie when Woody Harrelson's character reads aloud a letter from PSH's character and I'm thinking, "In the original script I'm sure Hoffman was supposed to be on screen delivering these lines or at least doing a voiceover as Katniss reads his letter."
posted by straight at 2:12 PM on February 4, 2016 [4 favorites]

God, it's like opening an old wound reading that. I wanted to watch him grow old and show his peers how it's done. Can you imagine him at 65? 85? What a loss.

The moment I knew he was way beyond the ordinary came in watching Owning Mahowny. It was on some late night when I was working, and I had no intention of watching it. It was just what came on next. His performance is masterful. The control. Oh, man, never has so much energy been spent on looking low energy. People point to About Schmidt and Jack Nicholson for the same sort of repressed every-man role, but there just is no comparison. If I hadn't seen Hoffman in roles in movies like Twister and Boogie Nights, I would never have suspected he was anything but a Mahowny. That was part of his magic. You assume Hoffman is in reality just like the guy in Twister when watching Twister, just like the guy in Boogie Nights when watching Boogie Nights, and so on.
posted by Muddler at 2:12 PM on February 4, 2016 [6 favorites]

Haven't seen them all, but Mahowny is probably my favourite PSH film. So good.
posted by turbid dahlia at 2:25 PM on February 4, 2016

Thirding Mahowny; I saw it in the theatre when it came out, and it's one of those movies I'll end up watching all the way through if I catch it on TV.

Man, I miss that guy.
posted by Alvy Ampersand at 3:19 PM on February 4, 2016

My only memory of seeing Red Dragon in the theater was standing up and high fiving my friend at that flaming wheelchair death scene. That was fucking epic.
posted by mannequito at 4:27 PM on February 4, 2016

I met Hoffman once. He was working on Patch Adams in Asheville, and chunks of the cast and crew came out to go white water rafting where I worked. He wasn't in my raft, but I walked up to him and introduced myself. Boogie Nights was the big thing he had done then, and I loved him in it. But I'm an asshole, so I said, "I really loved you in Twister." He was not pleased. I have regrets about the encounter, but he didn't really seem that nice or approachable.
posted by OmieWise at 4:30 PM on February 4, 2016 [1 favorite]

I had just last night decided to revisit the whole twitter thing (I created an account four years ago and did hardly anything with it before abandoning it shortly after). I wanted to choose an appropriate movie character still for my avatar and went with this, which is from this scene and perhaps one of the most epic in PSH's career. Damn, I miss him.
posted by AlonzoMosleyFBI at 4:59 PM on February 4, 2016

I watched Synecdoche, New York again last fall for the first time since PSH died. That movie took on new depths and was overwhelming in parts.

I saw that movie once and I'm not sure if I'm emotionally strong enough to watch it a second time.
posted by Horace Rumpole at 5:02 PM on February 4, 2016 [2 favorites]

Same here. Immediately after I watched it the first time I thought "I need to watch this again. I've barely understood the conceit this time, and I know there's so much more in there.", but it's intimidating, and between then and now my Mother died so god knows what it'll bring up. I feel like I should enter therapy as training before the second watch.
posted by benito.strauss at 5:09 PM on February 4, 2016 [3 favorites]

He is and will always be one of my favourite actors. I was absolutely gutted when I heard that he'd died. He inhabited every character. I'll always wonder what else he could have done. So good, so very good. He's on my list.
posted by h00py at 5:57 AM on February 5, 2016

I saw him on stage in Shopping and F*cking. He was incandescent on stage. I went back to see it (him, really) a couple of nights later. Amazing actor.
posted by papercake at 7:06 AM on February 5, 2016

Oh, I would have loved that. I really like that play.
posted by OmieWise at 8:41 AM on February 5, 2016

I said, "I really loved you in Twister." He was not pleased

I barely remember Twister, or him starring in it...was it an embarrassing role or something?
posted by Hoopo at 10:53 AM on February 5, 2016 [1 favorite]

Well, it was kind of a goony role. As I remember he played a hippie stoner dude bro. I only saw it after seeing Boogie Nights, and the Twister role was so obviously something he did because it was work. I don't think it was embarrassing per se, but even then it clearly was not his ambition.
posted by OmieWise at 11:41 AM on February 5, 2016

I barely remember Twister, or him starring in it...was it an embarrassing role or something?

He was Dusty, a storm chaser, one of the group around Bill Paxton and Helen Hunt - kinda slobbish looking, had a sound system mounted on his truck. I wouldn't call it an embarrassing role, but certainly one of his early ones as he was getting established and known, and not one that I would expect people would say is one of the their favourite PSH films.

I have a sense that PSH probably just wasn't all that approachable; he inhabited the roles of some very damaged and vulnerable people with an authentic feel of someone who had been there/was still there. And his turn as the villain in MI:III is a standout, but I don't think he had to reach far to find that person.
posted by nubs at 11:51 AM on February 5, 2016

Oh, yeah, I totally agree.
posted by OmieWise at 12:21 PM on February 5, 2016